Six-City Digital Equity Action Research Fellowship Launches

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, Community Informatics Lab at Simmons University, and Black Brilliance Research Project (BBR) launched the six-city Digital Equity Action Research (DEAR) Fellowship. The DEAR Fellowship is a participatory action research program for young adults, ages 19-24, that helps examine how digital inclusion coalitions understand and address the root causes of digital inequities in their communities. The fellowship started in November 2021 and will conclude with a celebration and community event in mid-January 2022. As part of this initiative, one organization in each participating city—Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Long Beach, San Antonio, and Seattle—will take part in the fellowship and host one young adult to serve as their Benton DEAR Fellow. The fellows and their host organizations receive a stipend for their work on the project over a two-month period. The end goal is to increase the skills and capacity for communities to identify and address the root causes of digital inequities while learning from peers around the United States. The fellows will do this through learning new participatory action research skills, an approach that brings together advocacy and research methods to create change.